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Players Graduate to Tougher Curves

The first baseman, Ralph Gonzalez, was the first to leave. He packed a suitcase, shaved off his goatee -- his mother insisted -- and climbed into a friend's car for the drive to Dublin, Ohio. He planned to spend a month with relatives there.

Three mornings later, a blue Cadillac Seville pulled up in front of a six-story tenement on West 168th Street, and the third baseman, Manny Ramirez, got in. The Cadillac belonged to Joe Delucca, the local scouting supervisor for Manny's new employers -- the Cleveland Indians. He drove Manny to La Guardia Airport for his flight to Ohio.

The 19-year-old who was the best high school ballplayer in New York City is starting at the bottom, with a rookie-league team in Burlington, N.C. Opening day was Friday. The Burlington Indians beat the Martinsville (Va.) Phillies, 5-1. Manny, who played center field, got his first hit in professional baseball -- a two-run homer.

Friday was also graduation for Manny's class at George Washington High School in the heavily Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights. Manny, who arrived from Santo Domingo six years ago, did not receive his diploma. But five of his teammates -- Henry Ortiz, Victor Beltran, Orreily Collado, Adrian Oviedo and Enrique Mendez -- did march down the aisle in caps and gowns.

Baseball, they said, had helped them get there. Like too many students in too many schools, many of their friends had dropped out before graduating. More than the last game, commencement marked the end of the season. Manny has the job -- with a $250,000 signing bonus -- they had all hoped for. The others are moving on, into futures that look far less secure.

In some ways, this was not their season. After seven straight years as Manhattan division champions, Washington, with an 11-3 overall record, relinquished the title this spring to its archrival, undefeated Brandeis High. Still, from March through May, the 22 Dominicans who played for Washington -- from Manny Ramirez to Enrique Mendez, a rookie who only came to bat seven times -- were more than just a baseball team. "We were a family," Enrique said.

Baseball defined their lives together. They spent their afternoons on the Astroturf diamond at the high school, or rode the subway to other ballfields. In the evenings, they stood on the corner outside Las Tres Marias restaurant, at 170th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, talking about that day's game, and the one tomorrow.

The conversation -- "Did you see that shot Manny hit over the fence;" "Carlito came through in the clutch again;" "Coach says he's saving Nestor for Brandeis" -- mingled with the sound of merengue blasting from open apartment windows and passing cars.

Now, the season is over, and the players are confronting the hard edge of the dream behind their baseball ambitions: getting out of Washington Heights.

Few Legitimate Jobs

Next fall, Enrique, who graduated with an 80 average, one of the highest on the team, will go to John Jay College of Criminal Justice. But right now he needs a job. He says he has to help his mother, who is on public assistance, and his two younger sisters, ages 10 and 15.

"Everything's taken," he said the day before graduation. "I just spent an entire day job-hunting in stores around here. No applications, nothing. All the college students are back." This week a friend has promised to take Enrique to a restaurant on the Upper West Side that he says needs delivery boys.

But some job offers continue to pour in. Enrique and his teammates say they are constantly fending off the local drug dealers. All they have to do to get into the trade, the dealers tell them, is stand on the corner and alert them of approaching police officers by pressing a small electronic alarm that is worn around the neck.

"You're called the alarm," said Henry Ortiz, who was the Washington co-captain this season. "You get $500 a week. Then you move up, you're a dealer. You get $800."

Henry says it seems unfair that his father, who works the late shift at the Krasdale Foods factory in the Bronx, earns just under $300 a week.

Enrique says he listens to his best friend, Ralph Gonzalez. "Ralph tells me not to go the wrong way," he said. "He tells me I have a future." Enrique would like to be a drug enforcement agent.

He was one of the fastest runners on the team. His speed helped him escape when he got caught in a shootout two summers ago between a dealer and a disgruntled buyer near his apartment on West 193rd Street.

"I ducked and got underneath a car," he said. "Then I ran across the street and went up a fire escape and went on the roof. I could hear the bullets whizzing by me. I was really scared that night."

Henry Ortiz and his cousin, Victor Beltran, along with Adrian Oviedo and Orreily Collado, want to get as far from the dealers as they can. They will all be going to Brown Mackie Junior College in Salina, Kan. (pop: 45,000), on baseball scholarships. They plan to pursue careers in business; Brown Mackie's curriculum concentrates on business.

The college has never had a baseball team before. "We don't mind," said Adrian, whose father works as a printer. "That means we'll have more of a chance."

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The school has three buildings and 750 students -- and, with most of its students from Kansas, no dormitories. The baseball coach, Jon Froelich, said he plans to lease an empty dormitory from another college nearby. Or, he said, the players can live in apartments.

"When I think of Kansas, I see a new world," said Orreily, one of eight children of a factory worker. "I see a lot of trees and new people. I'm going to feel like a stranger. I'm a little scared. I'm leaving my people."

The hardest one to leave will be his girlfriend, 16-year-old Julia Reyes. "Every week she's going to get a letter from me," Orreily said. "Three words -- 'I love you.' Three more words -- 'I miss you.' "

"I'm so happy for those guys," Ralph Gonzalez said. "They're getting out of prison -- New York City. But I'm kind of sad I'm not going with them."

Though Ralph was in all the top classes at Washington, he didn't graduate with his friends. With only a few credits left, he says he is determined to finish in the fall and go on to college. He wants to be a sportswriter. His adviser, Dorothy Buckley, says Ralph is one of the brightest, and most thoughtful, students; she says he only needs to believe in himself.

Baseball didn't help him this season. Everyone expected Ralph, the onetime junior varsity batting champ, to be a star. He excelled at first base. But he started out in a hitting slump, and though he broke out of it, he never forgave himself.

The coach, Steve Mandl, told his first baseman just to hit the ball, and not think about it. But, Ralph said, he couldn't stop thinking. He was worried about his father, Jose Gonzalez, who leaves every morning at 6:30 for his factory job in New Jersey and often comes home close to 9 at night, too exhausted to talk. He was angry at how other New Yorkers seem to think that all Dominicans are drug dealers; the dealers made him even angrier. He was desperate to get out, and afraid he wouldn't.

"Everything just seemed to hit me at once," Ralph said.

Adrian remembers a long talk he and Ralph had last year. "It was about 3 o'clock in the morning," Adrian said. "We were walking up St. Nicholas Avenue -- just walking and talking. Ralph told me, "Look up to 193rd Street. You see what you see now? That's what you're going to be seeing for the rest of your life -- unless you get out of here.' "

Don't Worry About Ronny

Though he didn't talk about it, no one suffered more this season than Ronny de la Rosa. For three years, he had waited for this year, when he was sure to be the starting catcher. But ballplayers must pass four classes each semester to be eligible for the team; Ronny, who arrived seven years ago from the Dominican Republic and reads on an elementary school level, kept failing. He never got to play and halfway through the season, he says, he stopped going to classes.

Six weeks ago, Washington discharged him. In four years, he had accumulated only 9 1/2 credits out of 40 credits needed to graduate. He turns 20 years old in October.

His guidance counselor, Denise Frenkel, said she advised Ronny that it was unlikely that he could receive his diploma, and that he should enroll in a high school equivalency program. But Ronny's resource room teacher, Jahel Kellner, said she doesn't see how Ronny, with his reading limitations, can pass.

This summer, finally, Ronny will be able to play ball. Coach Mandl runs the baseball program at the Manitou Wabing Sports Camp in Ontario. He is taking Ronny, along with Henry Ortiz and Victor Beltran and six of his other players, with him to Canada as counselors. Their train leaves Penn Station tomorrow morning.

In Washington Heights, where the game is everything, baseball is just beginning. All spring, Henry Payano, who is 10 years old and known to everyone as Plantain, went to the high school games to watch his older brother, Nestor, and his hero, Manny Ramirez.

Now, Henry, who will complete the fourth grade at Public School 155 Wednesday, is on the mound himself, wearing the uniform of the restaurant he lives above -- Las Tres Marias. He plays in the Alexis Ferreira Little League, where Nestor and Manny and most of the other Washington players got their start. The 4-foot-3-inch pitcher is already on a winning streak. On the mound last Tuesday, he beat Avilas Sporting Goods, 8-3.

He was throwing curveballs. And that's not all. Henry stole second, and then, with the help of an error by the opposing catcher, made it all the way home.

The Series So Far

The first article in this series about the baseball team at George Washington High School appeared on March 31. It was a profile of the team and its neighborhood, Washington Heights in Manhattan, a largely Dominican area with a passion for baseball. Subsequent articles looked at the team's coach, Steve Mandl; at the way baseball binds the players and their families together; at two intensely loyal fans who make up the team behind the Washington team; at the way the team was split by a feud between Coach Mandl and a rival sandlot coach, and at the star third baseman, Manny Ramirez. The most recent article, last Wednesday, was a portrait of several of the Washington old-timers.

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